1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document management method, document management apparatus, and document management system for managing documents. For example, the present invention relates to a document management method, document management apparatus, and document management system which store documents associated with the characteristics or profile of a user, thereby automatically collecting the documents associated with the characteristics or profile of the user who uses the documents later.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many of current document management systems, documents are stored in folders having a hierarchical structure, or documents appear to be stored in folders having a hierarchical structure. A user who manages documents using this arrangement increases the relevance of documents about a specific work by, e.g., storing the associated documents in a single folder or assigning the same index or keyword for the documents.
However, the above-described use of general users does not necessarily match the folder configuration intended by the administrator (the administrator wants to classify documents by format or title) and sometimes brings about a sorting operation or managing operation cumbersome for the administrator.
As a prior art to solve this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-268700 has made the following proposal. A concept “workspace” is prepared to allow a general user to use a unique classifying method independently of the folder configuration classified and managed by the administrator. The general user collects specific documents in the workspace to facilitate later use of them.
As another prior art to solve the problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-173343 has provided a virtual folder-type view (called “user setting tray”) which displays a result of retrieval based on arbitrary retrieval conditions designated by a user.
An object of the document management system is to “reuse stored documents or information”. Not only one user but also other users who are concerned in the same work or belong to the same organization will use the documents or information.
In the management method of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-268700, however, how to make other users use a workspace created by a user is not mentioned. Hence, any user who does not know the presence of a workspace created by another user must ultimately retrieve documents from the conventional hierarchical folder structure.
In the management method of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-173343, the user designates a keyword for retrieval. The user can designate a keyword for actual document retrieval to obtain a desired result if the information is uniquely managed by him/her. However, this method is not always effective for collecting documents created by other users.